Chapter 76
Chapter 76
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 75
Chapter Title: A Stale Past
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The past always finds its way back, no matter how thoroughly you erase it.
Like pencil marks that linger even after rubbing them out with an eraser.
Camilla's face bore those pencil marks plainly.
A scar remained around the eye that Duke had slashed.
Her neck was marred with stretch marks, as if forcibly pieced back together.
Her tiger ears were raggedly severed midway, as if cut with a saw, and the scales that had once densely covered her face were now sparse.
It was hard to glimpse her old appearance in that face, but Jane was certain.
Camilla had come back alive.
"No way... you were alive?"
[I should have killed her properly.]
"How... no, before that, how..."
Jane couldn't even finish her sentence, her chest pounding with shock.
But Camilla, who had once been somewhat close to Jane, understood the meaning behind those fragmented words.
[How did I survive? And how did I know to come here?]
Jane muttered gravely at the tiger woman's sign language.
"...I can't understand it."
Sign language was too difficult a language for an elf with 0.9 proficiency in her native tongue.
Flinch.
Camilla's shoulders trembled faintly, her carefully built tension crumbling.
Fortunately, there was someone present who knew sign language.
"She intends to explain how she survived and how she ended up here."
The old butler Dominic interpreted, twitching his mustache.
The reason Dominic knew sign language was, naturally, because he had studied it.
For the day he might need to play the role of a mute blackguard antagonist.
He had also mastered the languages of the ancient empire, the magocracy, the eastern confederation of kingdoms, the northern holy kingdom, and the southern twelve tribes—not to mention dragon tongue, though that was beside the point.
[First, about why I survived.]
"...she says."
[Obviously, to take away your most precious thing.]
"She has no intention of revealing how she survived."
Flinch.
Unfortunately, Jane's interpreter-cum-butler was so competent that he tended to paraphrase a bit liberally.
Camilla swallowed the anger boiling in her chest and continued signing.
[And you asked how I knew to come here? That's the wrong question.]
The scarred tiger woman curled the corner of her mouth upward.
[I didn't come here. You came to me.]
"..."
Dominic stopped interpreting and drew his twin swords.
"It seems I was too lax in my cleaning."
Camilla recoiled the instant she saw Duke's twin blades.
She quickly schooled her expression and glared at the old butler, but it resembled a baby tiger glaring at an elephant.
Grrr... cough!
The mute tiger forced a growl from her throat and vomited blood.
Camilla spat out a puddle's worth of blood and roughly wiped her mouth.
Jane's gaze naturally drifted to Camilla's neck.
Camilla's neck was regenerating, just as it had been the last time she saw it.
But there was a difference this time.
"Ugh. What the hell is that?"
Something writhed beneath her neck like it was crawling around as it regenerated.
Dominic quickly diagnosed Camilla's condition.
"It's not dragon blood."
"Yeah, it feels different from back then."
[That's right. It's not.]
Camilla signed in response to the two.
[You took my father. So now, experience the same.]
"...Experience the same..."
Before Dominic could finish interpreting, Jane stepped in front of him, shielding him from Camilla.
Camilla's intentions were unclear, but her goal was crystal clear.
To inflict the same wound on Jane.
"Tch."
As if declaring the game over, Jane tossed her parasol aside and drew her sword.
"Dominic, she's aiming for something! Be careful!"
Dominic watched the back of her head with meaningful eyes.
'Ah, it's disappointing if her RP breaks this early.'
Dominic, who had been thoroughly enjoying their villainess lady and shady butler play, found Jane's reaction a bit regrettable.
Getting that scared over a single ominous line from the enemy was as good as losing the psychological battle from the start.
Jane felt flustered reading the subtle disappointment in the old man's eyes.
In the meantime, Camilla's lion-masked companion broke the silence.
"Stringe!"
The moment the lion mask chanted the spell, a golden ring clamped around Dominic's ankle.
Jane panicked at the unfamiliar magic.
The veteran Dominic, however, charged at the lion mask without hesitation.
"Stringe!"
The golden ring doubled.
Camilla moved to block Dominic, buying time for the lion mask's incantation.
But Dominic stabbed his sword into her dragging bandages, sealing her movement, and continued his charge.
"Strin...!"
Slash.
The butler's sword traced a silver line, and the lion mask split in two belatedly.
The black mask pieces clattered to the ground like wooden blocks.
What emerged from beneath...
"Hehehe... Remember me, Sir Knight?"
Was the slave trader who had sold Ari.
Base hatred gleamed in the slave trader's eyes.
But Dominic merely tilted his head.
It wasn't that he was pretending not to know for the sake of RP as Dominic.
'Who?'
His criterion for remembering faces was simple.
Is it important to the narrative?
By that measure, a minor character like the slave trader whose heart he'd merely stroked once wasn't worth memorizing.
He could only infer from the speech that the man knew Dominic's contents were Duke.
Yet somehow misreading Dominic's expression, the slave trader muttered with a bright smile.
"Hehe. Got you... good..."
Crack.
The slave trader murmured with his head split like the mask.
Soon, tentacles extended from the severed cross-section, stitching and regenerating it.
As it regenerated, the slave trader grinned grotesquely.
"You shouldn't have let your guard down, Your Excellency."
The slave trader pointed at Dominic's ankle.
Golden chains now triple-wrapped it.
"Hard to obtain. A relic of the great sage Pater. Golden chains that can bind even a 7th-rank superhuman."
Activation condition: Chant "Stringe" three times.
Normally, a 7th-rank could kill a low-rank like the slave trader fifteen times over in that span, but if the opponent grew careless or stalled, it was different.
"Better than a slave collar, right?"
The slave trader smirked at the immobilized Dominic.
Behind him, his three remaining masked companions clasped hands and chanted.
"Festina! Festina! (Hasten! Hasten!)"
"Praeceptum dei pronuntio. (I declare by the precept of god.)"
"Legem caeli statim exsequere! (Enforce the law of heaven immediately!)"
The moment the chants ended, Dominic's ankle was yanked in one direction.
Dominic turned to see the Bagua furnace still on stage.
The butler gazed dryly at the cauldron sucking him in.
"Domini!"
Despite Jane's desperate cry, the butler was pulled into the furnace.
The moment Dominic was sucked inside, the lid slammed shut and flames ignited.
Tearing her eyes from the alchemy furnace that was turning a human into a pill in an instant, Jane shouted at Camilla.
"Why? Why are you doing this?!"
[This is all your karma.]
With Dominic gone, the lion-masked slave trader interpreted instead.
[Thought you'd escaped the past? Never. You can never run from that moment. Not you, not me.]
"No. I've settled the past long ago."
Jane had set aside her revenge upon meeting Dominic.
She now saw herself not as a girl bound by the past, but as herself.
But hearing the response, Camilla twisted her lips.
[Then why are you playing knight right now? What do you even want?]
"Obviously, to protect people..."
[Really?]
"..."
Jane's mouth shut.
She had become a guard because the person she admired was there.
Thinking about it, she herself had no particular goal.
She was merely chasing someone because she couldn't forget the memories.
Her throat tightened as she tried to retort Camilla's words.
She shook her head and shouted to the knights.
"Shut up! Knights, open the lid so Dominic can get out! I'll handle this woman!"
Having immediately ordered the knights, she drew her sword facing her moldy past.
And so, the two clashed again after ten years.
Camilla, reuniting after so long, had advanced far beyond her state ten years ago in every way.
Not just relying on physical prowess to push forward, but properly employing martial arts.
But that didn't make her Jane's match.
Jane hadn't been idle during that time either.
"I told you. I've already moved past it."
Jane, having subdued Camilla, held her sword to her neck and spoke.
In response, Camilla wagged her index finger.
As if to say it was Jane's delusion.
Jane scowled fiercely.
Meanwhile, the lion-masked slave trader and his three masked companions guarded the Bagua furnace, blocking the knights.
As if they would sacrifice their lives to turn Duke inside into a pill.
"Even if I die, I won't go alone. At least leave him a burn scar..."
Before he could finish, a sword burst from a crack in the Bagua furnace, piercing the slave trader's heart.
The slave trader fixed in place, as if impaled on the furnace.
"H-How...?"
The answer came as the furnace lid opened.
"Age brings useless experience. I've been through this a few times."
"Impossible..."
Thwack!
Dominic struck the slave trader's head—still impaled on the furnace—with his other sword.
Immediately after, a magic circle beneath the slave trader's upper clothing emitted brilliant light.
"Self-destruct! Get back!"
As the knights hurriedly distanced themselves from the headless corpse, Dominic indifferently looked down at it.
"Pathetic."
He kicked the corpse into the furnace and closed the lid.
Thud!
A dull sound echoed from inside, widening the cracks further.
Having easily dispatched the slave trader, he turned his gaze to the remaining three companions.
"Do I perhaps know you all?"
In lieu of an answer, the three removed their masks.
The orc chieftain who had sworn no violation, only to be toyed with by Duke and finished by Ari.
The baron forced to buy a pony from Duke.
Even the diplomat whose tongue Duke had pulled out.
If Rex had been here, he might have exclaimed "Avengers assemble!"
But unfortunately, present was the final boss who didn't allocate brain space to extras.
'...Should I pretend to recognize them?'
After deliberation, Dominic spoke with a solemn expression.
"I don't have enough lifespan left to waste on lingering ghosts trapped in the past."
This time, with the intent to behead them for sure, Dominic began swinging his swords.
While the butler swiftly cleared the past,
Jane merely watched his sword dance with complex eyes.